How to play Pokémon Go: From catch bonuses to eggs, Pokéstops, Gyms and Buddies

Pokémon Go is now officially out in dozens of countries and while Pokémania has died down a little since last summer, there are still a group of devoted players set on still catching 'em all! A recent report from the University of Wisconsin-Madison even found that Pokémon Go players are more cheerful and friendly than your average person.

If you're only just getting started, or want to know more about the game, WIRED has tips on what to expect. The premise is simple. Players walk about in the real world and come across different mythical creatures called Pokémon. Flick a Pokéball towards a Pokémon and you'll capture and add it to a your Pokédex – a database of all the Pokémon you've seen and captured.

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Once you reach level five in the game, you can head to Pokémon gyms in the real world and battle other Pokémon for control of the gym. If you win, you'll gain control of the gym and be able to collect Pokécoins which can used to buy in-game upgrades. Capturing and battling Pokémon earns you XP, which allows you to level up and capture rarer Pokémon later in the game.

First Steps

Despite shifting to phones from handheld games consoles, Pokémon Go feels very familiar if you've ever played a core series game before. You'll meet the newest Pokémon Professor, Professor Willow, who'll guide you on your way and explain the world of Pokémon.

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First though, you'll name and customise your character. You can choose male or female avatars, select their skin tone and other basic aesthetic features. You'll also pick an outfit. As you progress, you'll level up as a Pokémon Trainer. This makes more Pokémon available for capture and allows you to take on gym battles. A recent update also made it possible to furhter customise your character.

The Pokémon Company / Niantic, Inc

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The actual gameplay tutorial is fairly brief. Willow gives you a Pokéball and sends you off to catch your first Pokémon – one of the original starter trio from the original Pokémon Red and Blue, Bulbasaur, Charmander, or Squirtle – and introduces you to the basic mechanics. This is also your first chance to check out the augmented reality feature of the game, which places your target Pokémon into your surroundings, using your phone's camera. Flick a Pokéball in their direction and they're yours, but future captures won't be so easy.

Catch 'em All

The method of catching Pokémon is probably the biggest difference between Pokémon Go and the core games. While you'll still encounter them in the wild, you won't actually battle them or whittle their health down. Instead, successful capture is determined by the Pokémon's level, the type of Pokéball used, and even your throwing technique.

If you're playing with AR switched on, you'll also want to centre the critter in the screen as best you can, and keep your phone steady for improved results. AR isn't mandatory.

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To disable AR mode, click on a wild Pokémon so it appears on your battle screen and slide the AR slider in the top right-hand corner to the off position. It can be re-enabled at any time.

Medals

As you progress through the game, catching different types of Pokémon and hatching eggs, you'll be awarded medals. Tap on your user icon in the bottom left of the screen and scroll down to view your collection.

Like most achievement systems in games, these medals don't actually do anything, but they're a nice way to show off your Pokémon prowess. Medals won't appear until you've done the required action at least once, and to snag a gold medal you'll have to get grinding – some of them require players to capture 200 of the same type of Pokémon.

In a recent update, Ninatic added a new feature which grants a catch bonus when you earn medals based on catching certain types of Pokémon. These include Kindler, Psychic, and Gardener types, and so on. The screen these medals appear on has also been redesigned.

The new catch bonuses have been designed to give you a better chance of capturing Pokémon with a related type. For example, as you reach a higher tier for the Kindler Medal, your bonus to catch Fire-type Pokémon such as Charmander, Vulpix and Ponyta increases.

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Trainers can also work their way to a new tier by catching many Pokémon of the same type. If a Pokémon has multiple types, your bonus will be the average of your bonuses for each type. For example, Pidgey is both Normal and Flying type.

How to get Pikachu as a starter

Instead of selecting Bulbasaur, Charmander, or Squirtle, walk away from the trio to make them disappear. If you are able to repeat this four times, they return with Pikachu. Full instructions can be found here. YouTube channel Game Informer has also released a video tutorial on this.

Evolving your Pokémon

To evolve your Pokémon in Pokémon Go, you'll need to collect Candies and Stardust. Every capture you make increases Stardust, but you need to catch the same character multiple times to get character-specific Candies. For example, each time you catch Charmander you'll get three Charmander candies and you need 50 to evolve into Charmeleon.

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How to download Pokémon Go on Android and iOS

You can't use Candies from one character to evolve another but you can get more Candies by transferring individual Pokémon back to Professor Willow. You will additionally need Candies to power up your Pokémon and can only power up Pokémon past certain levels when you yourself have achieved certain XP levels in the game.

Below each Pokémon on their respective information page is a Stardust gauge, the number of Candies you have as well as their special moves. In addition to using Stardust to evolve your Pokémon, it can be used to boost a character's combat points (CP) and health points (HP). Both of these are crucial when fighting in Gyms.

Keep in mind that rarer Pokémon – particularly starters – will be much harder to evolve purely on the basis of scarcity. Meanwhile, the Magikarp requires a total of 400 Candies to evolve into Gyarados because its evolved form is so ferocious.

Eevee, also know as the Evolution Pokémon, additionally has five possible evolution options. Based on the episode The Battling Eevee Brothers, you can choose to evolve Eevee into Jolteon, Flareon or Vaporeon – an electric, fire or water Pokémon – by naming them after three of the brothers: Sparky, Pyro and Rainer respectively. Following the second-generation update, you can additionally get Epseon and Umbreon.

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What does each Pokémon evolve into?

Some Pokémon you can catch in the wild, like Jynx, can't be evolved further, some can be evolved twice and others evolve three times. For example, a Pidgey evolves into a Pidgeotto which evolves into a Pidgeot, while a Weedle becomes a Kakuna and then a Beedrill. By comparison, a Drowzee evolves into a Hypno.

Occasionally you will be able to catch evolved forms of Pokémon in the wild, or you can hatch them using eggs. The full list of Pokémon, there respective first and second generation evolutions as well as what type of Pokémon they are is detailed at Pokémondb.net/evolution.

Selecting Pokémon to transfer

Ultimately, a Pokémon's CP gives it strength, but you also need to consider its health points (HP) and the points next to their special moves. CP can be boosted using Stardust, but the move points are harder to change to it's better to have more accurate or powerful moves and then a higher CP than transfer Pokémon based purely on lower CP. When you power up a Pokémon, this increases the character's HP.

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As part of update version 1.19.1 on December 8, Niantic added the option to transfer multiple Pokémon to Professor Willow. To transfer Pokémon individually, open your list of Pokémon using the Pokéball icon on the homepage and press the small circular icon in the bottom right-hand corner. From here you can sort your list by A-Z, CP, or recently caught. Once sorted alphabetically, the various Pokémon with the same name will be sorted by CP.

To use the multiple transfer option, press and hold on a Pokémon to select it. Do the same for all the creatures you want to send to Professor Willow and then hit transfer.

How to use a Pokéstop

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Pokémon Go uses landmarks in your vicinity to create Pokéstops and Pokémon Gyms. Walk along the street, and a nearby plaque or historical object can serve as a Pokéstop. These appear as cubes until you are close enough to use them. Once close enough, the cube becomes a circle and selecting it shows you landmark that is plotted by this Pokéstop.

This image becomes a spinning marker. Spin the marker until its blue colour becomes a light purple and it releases Pokéballs. As you move through the levels, you can also collect Potions, Revive tokens, Lure modules, Razz Berries and Great Balls among other gifts. As part of the second-generation update, you can now additionally get Nanab Berries, Pinap Berries and 'special items.'

It can be tricky to collect these special items so Niantic recently added a feature that if you collect Pokéstops for seven days in a row, you're guaranteed at least one of these items.

How to use your Pokédex

The Pokédex shows you which Pokémon you've caught, seen and are missing. It differs from your inventory because it acts as a catalogue. There is a total of 240 Pokémon to capture. The number you've caught is shown at the top of the page next to the number you've seen. 'Seen' Pokémon include those you've either spotted inside a Gym that belong to other users, or those you've seen and were unable to catch.

Clicking on each caught Pokémon shows their fact page, including information about the type of Pokémon they are and their evolution.

The Pokémon Company / Niantic, Inc

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How to use and battle at Gyms

Gyms are different to Pokéstops. Although they're placed in the real world like Pokéstops, they can't be challenged until you reach Pokémon Trainer level five. At this point you will also be asked to pick a team – Team Mystic, Team Valor and Team Instinct – which are blue, red and yellow respectively.

Gyms offer the only form of Pokémon battles in the game, pitting you against a rival's team. There aren't any moves to select either – victory is determined by your Pokémon's Combat Power (CP), while fights themselves involve tapping to attack and swiping to dodge.

That said, certain attacks are better against certain Pokémon, so you should pick which monsters you take into battle carefully. Water-type Pokémon (Squirtle or Dewgong, for example) might have moves which are super-effective against fire-type Pokémon. The equation works the opposite way as well, so fire-type Pokémon aren't going to be so great at battling water-type Pokémon. Pitting a Pokémon against another one of the same type usually isn't a wise move either. This Pokémon strengths and weaknesses chart has a full breakdown of how type bonuses stack up. It was originally made with the original Pokémon games in mind, but the basics still apply to Pokémon Go.

The majority of Gyms will have already been claimed by a team and you can determine which team currently occupies that Gym because they are colour-coded, either red, blue or yellow. If the Gym is white, it means it isn't currently occupied or is between owners.

Tapping on a gym will reveal which team currently controls it, what level it is and how many Pokémon are guarding it. The name of the gym is shown along the top. The 1.19.1 version update added Pokémon type icons to the Gym battle screen to make it easier to know which creature will be most effective.

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WIRED/Niantic

Below the picture of the gym is a number and this relates to its strength, or 'prestige'. The higher the right-hand number, the more powerful it is and the harder it is to beat. You will then see the Pokèmon that are defending the gym, including their name and their CP as well as the trainer's name in the top right-hand corner. Swiping the screen will reveal how many Pokémon currently occupy that gym and gyms can hold up to 10 at a time. You have to defeat all Pokémon in a gym to take it over.

You don't have to battle against rival teams, however. You can battle at friendly Gyms with people on the same team colour. This will help boost the prestige of your team's Gym. Battling at rival Gyms lowers its prestige until its weak enough to be taken over. The higher the level of prestige a gym has, the more Pokémon it can hold and you can check the prestige level by selecting a gym and checking its level in the top left-hand corner.

In a recent update, Niantic added the option to allow trainers to take six Pokémon into battle instead of one. In addition, the CP of the Pokémon the player is training against may be temporarily lowered during a session to better match the individual Pokémon’s battle capabilities.

Once your team owns a Gym, you have the option to leave a Pokemon behind at your team's gym to aid in its defence. This will remove it from your Pokédex and place it in the line-up at the Gym until it is defeated. The longer you are in the Gym, the better your endurance and you will be rewarded with PokéCoins to increase your strength and Defender bonuses.

Play Daily

A recent update for Pokémon Go introduces daily bonuses, rewarding players for logging in and completing certain simple objectives. At the most basic level, you'll earn experience points for your trainer and Stardust to help evolve your Pokémon. Here's how it breaks down:

If you are catching a single Pokémon every day - and Niantic makes it sound like anything from a common Pidgey up will do - you'll earn 500 XP and 600 Stardust. If you manage that every day for seven consecutive days, you'll get an added bonus of 2,000 XP and 2,400 Stardust.

That's not all though. You'll also be rewarded for visiting Pokéstops. The first one you visit each day will reward you 500 XP plus "a number of additional items" when you spin the Photo Disc. A seven-day streak here will earn you a further 2,000 XP and even more goodies.

Expect Pokéballs, Razz Berries, and Potions, as normally awarded by PokéStops, but hopefully Niantic might improve the rewards you get for streak bonuses - some Incense or Lures would be nice.

Using incense and Lures

Players can either buy incense or collect them from Pokéstops. The same applies for Lures. Incense can be placed around you to attract Pokémon to your vicinity and lasts 30 minutes. This will move as you move and only you can see it.

Lures can be placed around nearby Pokéstops and they appear as glittering purple and blue markers which any player can see. To add a Lure, select a nearby Pokéstop, go to your Items list – by selecting the Pokéball on the app's map page – and select the Lure module. Modules can be found in Pokéstops, bought, or awarded to you when you level up.

Revive, Potions and Berries

As you level up, catching Pokémon will be trickier. It may take a couple of attempts, especially if the Pokémon's Combat Points (CP) are particularly high. You can increase your chances by feeding them Razz Berries.

As part of the second-generation update, Pokémon Go added Nanab Berries and Pinap Berries. Nanab Berries calm Pokémon down while Pinap Berries make them drop more Candy.

After a battle in the gym, your Pokémons' Health Points (HP) will drop. Click on damaged Pokémons and use either a Revive token or a Potion to boost their health.

Revive is a medicine that can revive fainted Pokémon. It also restores half of a fainted Pokémon's maximum HP. A Potion is a spray-type medicine for treating wounds. It restores the HP of one Pokémon by 20 points.

Niantic

Levelling up

Almost everything you do in Pokémon Go rewards you with experience points (XP). This includes collecting items from Pokéstops, catching Pokémon and battling in gyms. The exception is trading in Candies.

You can check what level you're on from the app's homescreen. Alternatively, select your avatar in the bottom left-hand corner to see how far you are from the next level. As you move through the levels, the amount of XP you need to level up increases.

A quick way to level up is to use Lucky Eggs. These are awarded to you at certain points throughout the game, or can be bought using Pokécoins, and double the amount of XP you receive for all actions for half an hour. One tip in particular to level up quickly is to spend a week hunting for Pokémon and refrain from evolving or trading in duplicates.

At the end of the week, find a Pokéstop – preferably one in a pub or cafe where you can stay for half an hour – and put a Lure module on it. Enable your Lucky Egg. Spend the next 30 minutes evolving characters, powering them up and catching any Pokémon that appear thanks to Lure module. In WIRED tests, we were able to level up twice (from 15 to 17) using this tactic.

Eggs and catching rare Pokémon

How to hatch eggs and get the best rare Pokémon in Pokémon Go

Certain Pokéstops release eggs. These eggs contain a number of rare Pokémons but they need to be incubated. Every player gets an incubator that can be used infinite times. You can also collect or buy additional incubators.

When you collect an egg, they sit in a separate tab in the Pokémon menu. Under each egg is a distance – 2km, 5km or 10km. This is how long you need to walk for these eggs to hatch. However, the walking 'timer' only begins when the egg is in an incubator and kilometres only count if the app is open as you walk.

This can be a big drain on battery. To combat this problem, Niantic has included a battery saving mode in the settings menu – select it and the screen will black out when the phone is being held by a player's side or in their pockets.

If you put your phone onto Vibrate or Loud mode, you can also hold the phone by your side (with the app open) and be notified when a Pokémon appears in your vicinity. This will spare you from constantly looking at your phone and put you less at risk of muggers, for example.

Buddy Up

Update versions 0.37.0 (Android) and 1.7.0 (iOS) introduced Buddy Pokémon. This isn't quite the same as the Walking Pokémon feature that debuted way back in the original Pokémon Yellow on the Game Boy and has been seen in several core games since - sadly, you won't be wandering Pokémon Go's real-world map with your favourite Pokémon at your heels.

Instead, you'll be able to select any Pokémon from your collection, who will then appear next to your avatar in the trainer screen. They'll be appropriately scaled, showing the size difference between human and the chosen species - an Onix would tower over, while a Pikachu will just about hit knee-height, for instance.

As part of a more recent update (version 1.19.1), the total Candy count for your Buddy Pokémon now appears on your buddy information screen. This update also added the total number of kilometres a buddy has walked on this information screen.

How to choose a Buddy Pokémon

After you've updated the app, go to the home screen and select your avatar. Press the menu button in the bottom right-hand corner and press Buddy.

Your list of caught Pokémon will appear and you can select which Pokémon you want to be your Buddy. The distance you need to walk to obtain Candy for each Pokémon varies and ranges from 1km, for a Jigglypuff for example, to 3km for an Onix or 5km for a Flareon.

You can swap a Buddy at any time by going to its information page, pressing the arrows icon in the bottom right-hand corner and selecting 'Yes' when asked if you want to swap. Swapping a Buddy loses your walking progress.

The Pokémon Company / Niantic, Inc

The feature has benefits beyond an impressive size comparison though. Walking with a Buddy Pokémon will earn Candy for that type, providing a much-needed route to powering up or evolving rarer creatures.

Given Candy can normally only be obtained by catching multiples of the same Pokémon, this eases the frustration of catching enough Bulbasaur to evolve all the way to a Venusaur, for instance, or building the stockpile of 400 Magikarp Candy needed to evolve a Gyarados. It will also help players power-up non-evolving but rare Pokémon, such as Aerodactyl, Magmar, and Electabuzz, though you'll still need to catch plenty of other Pokémon to have enough Stardust to spend on levelling up.

Count the PokéPennies

Pokémon Go is free-to-play, but it does include microtransactions. Virtual Pokécoins are sold at the following rates:

Coins are then spent on items, including extra Pokéballs that you'll need to actually catch Pokémon you encounter, support items such as incense to attract rarer creatures, eggs that hatch into new Pokémon, and upgrades for both your item backpack and Pokémon storage. Although you get proportionally more coins the more real-world money you spend, just shy of £80 is a lot to ask for the highest tier package.

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To buy items, select the Pokéball icon on the app's map page and go to Shop. Scroll down to buy Pokécoins to add them to your account. The total number of coins is shown in the top right-hand corner. You can then use these coins to buy items.

If you are shown an error message about your account being 'too full' it means you have too many balls, potions, revives, eggs and so in your virtual bag. You can either remove these items to free up space, or pay to expand the capacity of your bag.

To remove items, go to the Pokéball, Items and hit the trash can icon next to each item. From here you can select how many of each item you want to remove from your bag.